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Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Trump
has proposed a federal budget that increases defense spending by $54
billion and slashes "lower-priority" programs. The Office
of Management and Budget did not identify which agencies would be
slated for cutbacks, but administration officials said almost all
other discretionary programs, as well as foreign aid, would see
spending reductions. Many fear that this means that departments
that have long been the target of conservative, like the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), would face the biggest cuts.

Friends
of the Earth senior political strategist Ben Schreiber said, "
Senate Democrats must come out immediately and make it clear that
sacrificing working Americans to Trump's war machine is an
unacceptable trade."

Michael
Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said,
"A budget is a statement of priorities, and with this proposal,
Trump is telling America he doesn't care about what happens to
children who are forced to drink toxic water and breath polluted
air.... This is a budget rigged to boost the profits of corporate
polluters at the expense of the health of our families."

Trump
said the budget will put "America first” but the US are
already first in armament spending and the arms trade yet most
definitely not first when it comes to education and health.

Rapid
technological advances continue to render many jobs obsolete.
Globalization has shifted employment to parts of the world with the
lowest costs and standards. Most households have gone from one
income-earner to at least two. Women have fully integrated into the
workforce, albeit often with less-than-equal opportunities,
conditions and pay. A lot of our work is unnecessary and often
destructive — depleting resources, destroying ecosystems, polluting
air, water and soil, and fuelling climate change.

Yet
we're still working the same or more hours later into life within the
same outdated and destructive system, furiously producing, consuming
and disposing on a wheel of endless growth and conspicuous
consumption. The gap between rich and poor is widening and working
people — and those who can't find work — are falling further
behind, crushed by growing debt, increased competition for scarce
jobs and declining real wages and benefits. Many
people are tired, too stretched to become politically engaged or even
to spend as much time with family and friends as they'd like, and the
grinding consumer cycle doesn't bring them real joy or fulfilment.

The unions
deserve credit for many gains working people have enjoyed over the
past century or more, they also merit some criticism. In the face of
technological advances and globalization, unions have failed to fight
for steadily reduced work hours although lately it's more fighting to
prevent drastic cuts to jobs, wages and benefits.

From
a management perspective (the only perspective that counts)
it is easier to manage one worker doing 60 hours a week than two
doing 30 each. It's all about what works best for them and their
profits. Nothing else really comes into the picture

A
lot needs to be done to our economic systems and to address critical
issues like pollution and climate change.
Many reformists are now proposing gradual piece-meal ameliorations
but
many of those will remain just that – proposals and won't be
implemented to any significant degree under capitalism. Capitalism
wants you ignorant and desperate, able to work at your job, but not
able to see what's at the heart of the system and therefore not able
to work at changing it. Under this system people are financially
stretched to the limit, tired, worried and fed a steady diet of media
and consumerist indoctrination. They are left intentionally confused
but always feeling a vague confidence in the system, because they
have been told their entire lives that it is fine and fair and "the
way it is" and that you only sink or swim based on individual
talent and effort. Until people are able to comprehend what is going
on behind the curtain of disinformation and deception, they are
helpless. The capitalist system is well aware that if you give people
security and time, they will start to get ideas that you don't want
them to have. These things, along with decent education, are
intentionally withheld for the health of the system.

China’s
birth rate, one of the world’s lowest, is fast becoming a worry for
authorities rather than the achievement it was considered at a time
when the fear was over-population.The
Chinese government credited it with preventing 400m births.
The
policy was ended in 2015.China
began implementing its controversial one-child
policyin
the 1970s in order to limit population growth, but authorities are
now concerned that the country’s dwindling workforce will not be
able to support an increasingly ageing
population.

Now,
China
is considering introducing birth rewards and subsidies to encourage
people to have a second child, after surveys showed economic
constraints were making many reluctant to expand their families, the
state-owned China Daily
has reported. The idea was revealed by Wang Peian, vice-minister of
the National Health and Family Planning Commission, at a social
welfare conference on Saturday, the newspaper said.

For
years Shell had a clear grasp of global warming 26 years ago. Since
then the company has invested heavily in highly polluting oil
reserves and helped lobby against climate action,
say critics.

Shell’s
film, called Climate of Concern, was made for public viewing,
particularly in schools and universities. It warned of extreme
weather, floods, famines and climate refugees as fossil fuel burning
warmed the world. The serious warning was “endorsed by a uniquely
broad consensus of scientists in their report to the United Nations
at the end of 1990”, the film noted.“If
the weather machine were to be wound up to such new levels of energy,
no country would remain unaffected,” it says. “Global warming is
not yet certain, but many think that to wait for final proof would be
irresponsible. Action now is seen as the only safe insurance.”

The
predictions in the 1991 film for temperature and sea level rises and
their impacts were remarkably accurate, according to scientists.
Despite this early Shell invested many billions of dollars in highly
polluting tar sand operations and on exploration in the Arctic. It
also cited fracking as a “future
opportunity” in
2016, despite its
own 1998 data showing
exploitation of unconventional oil and gas was incompatible with
climate goals. Shell has recently lobbied successfully to undermine
European renewable energy targets and
is estimated to have spent $22m
in 2015 lobbying against climate policies.
The company’s investments in low-carbon energy have been minimal
compared to its fossil
fuel investments.
Shell has also been a member of industry lobby groups that have
fought climate action, including the so-called Global Climate
Coalition until 1998; the far-right American
Legislative Exchange Council (Alec)
until 2015; and remains a member of the Business Roundtable and the
American Petroleum Institute today.

Prof
Tom Wigley, the climate scientist who was head of the Climate
Research Unit at the University of East Anglia when it helped Shell
with the 1991 film said Shell’s actions since 1991 had “absolutely
not” been consistent with the film’s warning.

Patricia
Espinosa, the UN’s climate change chief, said the investments the
oil majors are making in clean energy are, Espinosa said, “very
small, the activities in which they are engaging are still small and
do not have the impact that we really need.”

Slough
was built on immigration. Since
the 1920s, people have come here from across the UK and around the
world to look for work. The
reason migrants came here in the 1920s is the reason they come here
now - jobs.Slough's
unemployment is just 1.4%, and the average wage is £558 per week.
Slough's
economy relies on migrant workers.It's
the most ethnically diverse area outside London.There
are 150 different languages spoken there. The last census found that
two in every five of the town's residents had migrated to the UK.
Slough's
story is driven by economics: the town that built its success on
immigrationSlough
voted for Brexit. The town that made its fortune with migrant labour
wanted out of Europe.

Salvatore
Carus's business cuts and polish marble. Caruso, uses Polish workers.
His workforce has tripled in size in the past decade. "If you
take the migrant workers out of it, who's going to do the work?"
he asks.

Sylwia
Leszczynska is Polish and came to Slough 11 years ago to work as a
carer for elderly people. She planned her future in the UK. She
bought a house with her husband, Konrad. Their children go to British
schools.But she doesn't believe in the dream anymore.

''Immigration,
it's not so good an idea, like we thought before," she says. "I
now think more about going back to Poland.I've got a feeling they
don't want us here.”

Her
husband nods, and adds quietly: "Mr Farage opened Pandora's box.
And now it's just worse really, worse than it was before."

Arturo
Benjumeda and Arturo Jr., from Spain both work at a printing company.
In Seville - a city where almost a third of the population is
unemployed - he faced losing his home.

"I
arrived here at night time, and I was already working in the
morning," he says "Everything was new for me, so I felt
quite stressed and very nervous."

His
wife, Maria, has also found work, in a pub. The Brexit vote didn't
put them off. "Our situation was so desperate, we had nothing to
lose by coming here," she says.

There
are plenty of people in Slough who are unhappy about immigration.
"Strain on the resources" is the most common complaint you
hear. But despite the pressure, research suggests most communities
still get along.

Rob
Deeks runs a charity that works with children. "When we ask them
if they've experienced racism, they have, but not in Slough," he
says. "They say, 'In the town up the road,' or, 'On the train.'
This place is diverse, but it gets on."

Andy
Street quit as the boss of John Lewis last year to
try to become the mayor of the West Midlands. If elected in May, he
plans to turn back to his former employer in an attempt to
revolutionise public services. Street is looking to bring the
company’s employee-owned partnership model into vital local
services such as transport, social care and skills training, handing
workers a stake in their performance.

The
Conservative mayoral candidate said he could spin off existing
services into new mutually owned operations, provide funding for
these and social enterprises to compete for contracts, and allow
existing mutuals, enterprises and charities to take on public work.
Mutuals are fully or majority owned by members, while social
enterprises work to support communities or the environment.

And
how different will it be?

It
seems the so-called partner workers at the John Lewis and Waitrose
Stores will be ''asked'' to cut their fellow workers jobs and
conditions again just recently in the interests of modernisation and
the commercial interests of the firm.

Operating
profits slumped 31% despite a 4.5% rise in sales in the six months to
the end of July as the company invested heavily in equipment to
support its online business and increasing pay for staff.Last
year the staff bonus was 10%, the lowest for 13 years. This year’s
lower bonus will be known on 9 March.

UK
workers' wages fell an average of 1% a year after 2008 financial
crisis putting it well behind global average. The
findings are further evidence that real incomes are set to be
squeezed this year.

The
UK was almost at the very bottom of a national ranking of wage
growth compiled
by the Trades
Union Congress.
A study based on data from the International Labour Organisation,
shows that average wage growth across 112 countries was 2.3 per cent
a year between 2008 and 2015, compared to a median increase of 1.6
per cent. Of all the countries examined by the TUC, only a handful
ranked worse than the UK in terms of wage growth, putting it in 103rd
place.

The
Bank of England reported that employers plan to scale down pay awards
this year, despite the expected
jump in inflation due to the plunging pound.
According to the agents’ latest survey, average pay growth of 2.7
per cent in 2016 is expected to slow sharply to 2.2 per cent in 2017.

Consumer
price inflation currently stands at 1.6 per cent and is expected to
reach 2.7 per cent by the Bank of England by the end of 2017, largely
due to the 12 per cent slump in sterling since last June's Brexit
vote.

Women
in the UK are participating in the labour market in ever greater
numbers with the gender employment gap now at a record low. But
rising female participation hasn’t been the only big labour market
shift over the last 50 years. There has been a massive upheaval in
the nature of work carried out too. The classic mid-skilled jobs of
the past – secretarial and routine manufacturing jobs – are in
long-term decline and won’t be coming back. The profound progress
in pay made by the first four generations born in the 20thcentury
came to a grinding halt for the millennials (those born between 1981
and 2000). Not
only have they failed to claim a larger slice of the wages pie in
their current workplace, they also moved job with less frequency.

There
was supposed to be a quick bounce back from the crash of 2008
offering bumper pay rises all round, quickly pushing up the average
wage to new highs. It was this rosy view that encouraged the Bank of
England to forecast in every year since 2010 a rise in wages of such
force that it said higher interest rates would be needed within two
years to calm things down. It never happened. Not even the British
“jobs miracle” of the last two years, which
has seen the employment rate reach record levels,
was able to bring about the expected jump in wages to 4%. The
thinking behind the theory was that once unemployment hits its
natural rate, the labour market will be so tight that workers can
almost walk into a job and in their newly confident state, start to
bid up their wages. Last
week MPs asked four B of E policy-makers how
they could be so wrong year after year.

The
Dow closed at record highs for 13 sessions in a row in January 1987,
nine months before the Black Monday market crash – not that the
blog is making any predictions but capitalism is a game of boom and
bust...when the bubble bursts, nobody has a clue and that is what
capitalist stock-market all about...guess-work. As Marx understood
it, we only determine the cause of a recession by hindsight.

This
arises from the large amount of energy needed to make the fertiliser,
and from nitrous oxide gas released when it is degraded in the soil,"
said lead author Liam Goucher, a scientist at the University of
Sheffield in England. Nitrate-rich runoff from industrial-scale
agriculture also damages lakes, rivers and coastal waters around the
world, in some cases creating so-called "dead zones"

The
study highlights a double challenge in the decades ahead: how to grow
enough food to feed the world's population -- set to increase to 11
billion from seven billion -- in a way that does not poison the
planet.

"A
key part of this challenge is resolving the major conflict embedded
in an agri-food system whose primary purpose is to make money, not to
provide sustainable global food security," (our emphasis) the study said.

Food
production and consumption are responsible for about one-third of
total greenhouse gas emissions. Cereals such as corn, rice and wheat
-- usually grown with huge amounts of chemical fertiliser -- account
for half of the calories consumed by humanity. To better assess the
environmental cost of wheat production, researchers led by Goucher
broke down the supply chain of a typical 800-gram (28-ounce) loaf of
bread from "seed to feed". In 2016, Europeans consumed, on
average, about 63 kilos of bread per person, while Americans eat
about half that amount. They found that ammonium nitrate fertiliser
contributes 43 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in a loaf's
life cycle, a level they described as "unsustainable." In
agriculture, more than 100 million tonnes of chemical fertiliser is
used globally every year, applied to about 60 percent of all
agricultural crops.

"This
is a massive problem," said the study's senior author, Peter
Horton, chief research advisor to the Grantham Centre for Sustainable
Futures. "But environmental impact is not costed within the
system, so there are currently no real incentives to reduce our
reliance on fertiliser."

How to achieve sustainable global food security is not only a technical question but a political and economic one, (our emphasis) the researchers added.

The
first comprehensive
studyto
look at economic and social effects of the one million refugees
fleeing to Germany is out, and it flatly contradicts the belief that
the refugee influx to Germany in 2014 and 2015 was followed by a
“crime epidemic,” co-researcher Martin Ungerer, from the Centre
for European Economic Research, says.The
study, looked at federal records on refugee allocations, data from
state-run reception centers, and federal crime data. The study
reinforces what the federal government said last year: Refugees
committed crimes at the same
level,
according the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA).

There
was a small increases in some criminal activity in the immediate
aftermath of the record influx of refugees in Germany such as an
uptick in drug crimes and fare-dodging in areas where large refugee
reception centers were located but these spots were also associated
with increased minor crime for German citizens. Ungerer suggests this
could be explained in part by the increased police presence around
large reception centers.

The
findings are broadly consistent with other studies on the effects of
immigration more generally. J. L. Spenkuch, an economist at
Northwestern University says that immigrants in the US are no more
likely to commit violent crimes than natives, though there are small
differences in less serious offenses. “It is reassuring to see that
these results appear to hold up when it comes to refugees and
Germany,” explains.

Similar
research in the US by Christopher Salas-Wright, an assistant
professor at Boston University’s School of Social Work, found what
he described as “clear and compelling evidence that refugees are
substantially less likely than those born in the US to report
involvement in a variety of non-violent and violent criminal
behaviors.”

Ungerer
also looked at the impact of the refugee crisis on Germany’s labor
market. The study found little evidence of a “displacement
effect”—refugees taking jobs from German workers. In fact, most
refugees were actually “struggling to find work,” Ungerer says.
His findings highlighted the difficulty of quickly integrating
refugees into the German labor markets.

Donald
Trump is anything but a man of few words, especially on Twitter where
he
produces
a flurry of tweets, covering practically everything, yet the
president hasn’t commented on the shooting in Kansas by a white
xenophobe that killed 32-year-old Indian IT worker Srinivas
Kuchibhotla and wounded his colleague, Alok Madasani and and a local
American customer who tried to intervene to stop the murderer. We can
be sure if the situation was reversed, the populist president would
have much to say on the incident.

“What
good does it do to treat people and send them back to the conditions
that made them sick?”
Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health
at University College London, asks.

As
societies around the world become more unequal, the gap between
levels of health widens. Marmot says that social injustice is the
biggest threat to global health and a radical change in society is
needed if we really want people to live long and healthy lives.

Take
Baltimore, for example:

“LeShawn
has grown up in the Upton Druid Heights neighbourhood in Baltimore’s
inner city,” explains Marmot, who has conducted research on health
inequalities in communities across the world. “Bobby has grown up
in Greater Roland Park.”

Although
merely kilometres apart, people living in the suburban and affluent
Roland Park can expect to live to the age of 83.

But
LeShawn, living in the inner city, will probably die 20 years
earlier. Life expectancy in Upton Druid Heights is just 63 years.

The
reasons for this massive gap?

Only
10% of residents in Upton Druid Heights start tertiary education,
while 75% of those living in Roland park complete college.

Almost
all children living in the suburb can read proficiently by the third
grade. Less than half of children in the inner city can read
proficiently by the same age.

“In
2005 to 2009 there were 100 non-fatal shootings for every 10,000
residents, and nearly 40 homicides in Upton Druid,” he says.

In
Roland Park there were no non-fatal shootings in the same
period.

Households
in the city earn an average annual income of $17,000 while
Roland Park residents have a median income more than five times
higher – $90,000.

“The
conditions in which we live, early childhood development, income and
education – these all predict how healthy we are and how long we
will live,” says Marmot. He argues that our societies need to
change radically: we need to invest aggressively in education and
reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

Nowhere
is this more relevant than in South Africa, the most unequal country
in the world according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank.

The
IMF estimates that 10% of the population earn around 60% of all
income, compared to only 20% to 35% in more advanced economies.

South
Africa has the highest level of inequality in the world at just over
63%.

In
comparison, Sweden and Norway have Gini Coefficients of 27% and 25%%
respectively, according to World Bank estimates.

It
does not matter how wealthy a country is. It matters that the wealth
is more evenly spread.

One of
the wealthiest nations in the world, the US, has some of the worst
health outcomes, argues Marmot, because inequality is rife.

“Go
into a typical American school and count one hundred boys aged 13.
Thirteen of you will fail to reach your 60th birthday,” he says. Is
13 out of 100 a lot? The US risk is doublethe
Swedish risk, which is less than seven.

He
says that life expectancy in Costa Rica is high, about 80 years in
2012, even though it is not a wealthy nation. But inequality is
lower, quality education is accessible and, interestingly, the
country’s decision to abolish its military in 1948 has freed up
resources to invest in public amenities. Marmot argues that the money
and resources saved by not having to fund an army have been instead
invested in, for example, education – and decades later the health
of Costa Ricans has improved dramatically. In 2007 almost every
single child aged three to five in Costa Rica attended pre-school.
This is compared to just over 20% for many other South American
countries such as Paraguay.

Ensuring
children are educated and protected from abuse can radically change
their prospects.

In
England, says Marmot, preventing early adverse events in childhood,
such as verbal, physical or sexual abuse, can reduce the likelihood
of teen pregnancy by 38%. Many instances of abuse occur in households
with low incomes and high unemployment.

According
to the statistics of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the
reduction in poverty has slowed down to 5.9 percentage points during
the period of 2010-2014 from 8.5 percentage points of the years
2005-2010, and from 8.9 percentage points of the period 2000-2005.
The government approximates that 25.6 percent of the population lives
below the so-called poverty line as of 2014. It is also difficult to
find causation between deliberate policy of government and reduction
in poverty. Economic growth in Bangladesh is mostly consumption-based
which can also otherwise be called "auto-pilot rate of growth".
The underemployed people in rural areas, who either migrated to
cities or abroad and fuelled consumption through remittances, largely
contributed to Bangladesh's reduction in poverty.

There
has been much said about economic growth, yet the process in
Bangladesh has not matched with jobs. Evidently, a considerable
number of people have entered into the labour market with wages below
the requirement for graduating out of the so-called poverty line —
people who can be termed as "working poor." According to
the BBS' latest labour force survey for the calendar years of 2014
and 2015, the country generated only 600,000 employments (300,000 per
annum) out of two million eligible to enter the job market on an
annual basis. Youth unemployment rate also rose sharply to 9.5
percent in 2015 from 8.1 percent in 2013. The unemployment rate is
high amongst educated youth. The number of underemployed increased by
over 10 million between 2011 and 2013 and reached 21.5 million in
2014. A World Bank-ILO report states that about 41 percent of
Bangladeshi youth were NEET (not in employment, education or
training) in 2013.

The
fruits of economic growth have not been shared fairly, and that the
current economic crisis has further widened the gap between the rich
and the poor. According to BBS estimates, nominal wage indices have
increased by 24.7 percent during the period 2010-11 to 2014-15 while
the consumer price index (CPI) grew by 32.6 percent during the same
period, implying labourers have lost 7.9 percent of the real wage
income they used to earn in 2010-11. The degree of income inequality,
as measured by the Gini coefficient, has increased from an average of
0.38 in the 1980s to 0.44 in the 1990s and further to 0.46 in the
2000s, meaning the gap between the rich and the poor is still
widening. Bangladesh is being run by a ruling class which is
interested only in securing wealth by any means.Over
the years, through the actions of successive regimes, aspirations of
equality, human dignity and social justice have been supplanted by a
completely different kind of aspiration for the power elite -
primitive capital accumulation.

During
the 15-year era of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
(2000-2015) maternal mortality was halved and the number of couples,
mostly women, accessing contraception increased to 62 percent. Is
Bangladesh thus winning in the pursuit for universal sexual and
reproductive health care services for all of its citizens?
Unfortunately, it is not quite as straightforward; the many
achievements already made are still outweighed by some significant
challenges the country faces – especially girls and women.

Each
year, 5,200 women die due to pregnancy and childbirth related
complications in Bangladesh. This amounts to nearly 15 women losing
their lives every day.

Life-saving
emergency obstetric and newborn care is often not available or is of
poor quality. 62 percent of women still give birth at home and 58
percent, without skilled birth attendance. This doesn't come as a
surprise when taking into account that the health portfolio receives
only 4.1 percent of the government budget, opening up opportunities
for private facilities, which in turn can lead to high out-of-pocket
expenditures for patients. Limited infrastructure and a fear of high
costs and poor quality, paired with harmful social norms which limit
girls' and women's decision-making power, leave Bangladesh in a
situation where adolescents, young mothers and couples can't access
the care they need.Women
with no education and living in the poorest households are far less
likely to be assisted by a skilled attendant during delivery.

Bangladesh
is lagging behind other South Asian countries particularly in terms
of the ratio of midwives and nurses to population. Depending on the
year of measurement, India and Sri Lanka have between five and six
times as many midwives and nurses as Bangladesh, and Pakistan has
almost twice as many. Bangladesh has only 2.2 nurse-midwives per
10,000, who do not meet a global standard of midwifery, and which is
less than half the global average for low-income countries. Overall,
workforce density is well below the internationally recommended
figure of 22.8 per 10,000 required to achieve relatively high
coverage for essential health interventions in countries most in
need.

Midwives
who are educated and regulated to international standards can provide
87 percent of the essential care needed for women and their newborns;
investing in midwifery education and deployment to community-based
services can potentially yield a 16-fold return in terms of lives
saved and costs of caesarean sections averted.

In
2012, only 1 percent of Bangladesh's population was covered by some
form of health insurance.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Economic
inequality has always been a subject of discourse. Global inequality
is worse than at any time since the 19th century. There exists
a highly unequal distribution of incomes and assets within countries
and between countries. While many people enjoy longevity and good
health, more than one billion people live in abject poverty,
struggling for mere survival every day. The poorest of the poor face
the daily life-and-death challenges of insufficient nutrition, lack
of healthcare, unsafe shelter, lack of safe drinking water and
sanitation. A grotesquely unequal distribution of income means
millions of children run the risk of dying from easily treatable
diseases.

The
workers who grow and harvest the cornucopia of fruit and veggies in
the rich fields of California’s Salinas Valley live in a constant
crisis of poverty, malnutrition and homelessness. Toiling in
“America’s salad bowl,” they literally cannot afford to eat the
fresh, nutritious edibles they produce. The
valley is generating billions of dollars in sales that have enriched
landowners and corporate executives and turned Salinas Valley into
farm country with Silicon Valley prices. Unable to afford good food,
the workers eat poorly — with 85 percent being overweight or obese
and nearly 6 out of 10 diagnosed with diabetes, while many
more, uninsured and unable to afford testing, go undiagnosed.
Especially appalling, about one-third of elementary schoolchildren in
the Salinas City district are homeless. They sleep with their
families in tents, abandoned buildings, tool-sheds, chicken coops or
on the ground, next to the rows of crops they tend.Allowing
such abject poverty in fields of abundance is made even more
shameful by the fact that our society throws 40 percent of our food
into the garbage.

Financial
trusts and hedge funds are buying up these farms and converting them
into investment packages for super-rich global speculators. One of
these Wall Street investment schemes is called Farmland Partners.
It’s run by managers trained in mergers and acquisitions as
executives at the investment powerhouse Merrill Lynch. Rather than
being sod-busters, Farmland
Partners are tax
busters,
using a legalistic plow called a real estate investment trust (or
REIT) to obtain enormous tax breaks to subsidize their scheme.
With this special subsidy, Farmland Partners has attracted hundreds
of millions of dollars from investors to buy up farms and ranches —
who now own 295 agricultural properties covering 144,000 acres in 16
states including California’s Salinas Valley.

Of
course, the Wall Street plow-boys don’t dirty their own soft hands
by actually farming; they’ve figured out how to “work” the land
without touching it — and how to harvest a sweet profit. The
syndicate hires tenant
farmers to
do the sweaty work of plowing, planting and nurturing the crops. This
tenant system produces a double-line cash flow for the faraway
owners: Farmland Partners charges the tenants rent for tilling the
corporate soil, then the partners harvest a sweet share of any
profits from the sale of crops that the tenants produce. “It’s
like gold,” says the founder of one such scheme, “but better,
because there’s cash flow.” The new generation of young farmers
who actually want to farm are having a hard time finding affordable
land to get started. These new generation farmers can easily be
outbid for good land by Wall Street speculators who have the cash
flow from tenants and the subsidy from taxpayers to underwrite their
financial contrivance.

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.